Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad says Russia’s deal with Turkey regarding Turkish incursion into Syria does not amount to support for its invasion but rather an attempt to convince the Turks to leave the country.
Speaking to Italy’s Rai News 24 in an interview broadcast on Monday, al-Assad said: “Being with Turkey and making this compromise does not mean they support the Turkish invasion, rather they wanted to play a role in order to convince the Turks that you [they] have to leave Syria.”
The Russians were not supporting the Turks and were not saying that the reality was good. Instead, they were trying to balance the negative roles of the United States (US), the Western world, Turkey and the Kurds and to make the situation “less bad” by stepping into the region.
“They [the Russians] deal with reality. Now, you have a bad reality, you have to be involved to make some… I would not say compromise because it is not a final solution. It could be a compromise regarding the short-term situation, but in the long-term or the mid-term, Turkey should leave. There is no question about it,” the Syrian president argued.
When asked about whether he was planning to discuss the situation in Syria with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the long-term, al-Assad said such a meeting would bring him no joy.
“I would feel disgusted to deal with those kinds of opportunistic Islamists, not Muslims, Islamists – it is another term, it is a political term. But again, I always say: my job is not to be happy with what I am doing or not happy or whatever. It is not about my feelings, it is about the interests of Syria, so wherever our interests go, I will go,” said the Syrian leader.
Ever since the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011, Turkey and Russia have been supporting opposing groups. Moscow and Tehran support the al-Assad regime, while Ankara has been backing rebel groups, notably the former al-Qaeda affiliate Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
In April, Russia-backed Syria launched attacks on the rebels in Idlib, the last major rebel-held enclave in northwest Syria where Turkish troops were also deployed.
With the advancement of Al-Assad forces in Idlib, Erdogan has shifted his priority to prevent a mass influx of refugees from the region. He was calling for al-Assad’s ousting at the beginning of the civil war.
In its new stance, Turkey wants free elections in Syria that are monitored by the United Nations (UN), agreeing to work with anyone to be elected in a fair election.
Late in October, confidential knowledgeable Turkish security officials told Reuters that the two countries had covert contacts since the Idlib attacks.
Ankara, however, launched a military operation into Syria on October 9 against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) which has played a crucial role in the defeat of the Islamic State (ISIS) since 2014 and controls most of northeastern Syria.
The SDF consists primarily of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG).
Turkey aims to clear the region of the Kurds and to set up a “safe zone” where it plans to resettle up to one million Syrian refugees currently living in Turkey.
The YPG, once an enemy to al-Assad regime, struck a deal with Damascus in a bid to fend off the Turkish attack.
Turkey brought an end to its operation in Turkey on October 22 following deals with the US and Russia.
According to the deal with Russia, the YPG with its arms would be removed from Manbij and Tal Rifat, where al-Assad forces had moved in. When the pull-outs are over, Turkish-Russian joint patrols would be carried out 10km (6 miles) to the east and west of the zone, with the exception of Qamishli, a de-facto Kurdish capital.
However, the deal has not mentioned anything about the nearby province of Idlib, the last major rebel-held enclave in northwest Syria where Turkey maintains observation posts.
According to some analysts, with the latest Ankara-Moscow memorandum, Russian President Vladimir Putin has emerged as the most powerful player in Syria’s complex war in its ninth year, replacing the influence of the U.S. in the region.
During the Turkish incursion, Erdogan claimed that Turkey had been given the green light to launch the attack on Syria. Although the US administration refuted Erdogan’s claim, U.S. President Donald Trump faced harsh criticism by many for his order to withdraw the U.S. troops from the region just before the Turkish operation.
Turkey sees the YPG as the Syrian offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) that has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state since the 1980s.
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The post Putin aims at making Turkey leave Syria, al-Assad says appeared first on IPA NEWS.
from IPA NEWS https://ipa.news/2019/12/11/putin-aims-at-making-turkey-leave-syria-al-assad-says/
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